Tax Resistance News of the Day

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War Tax Resistance Can Look Like Opposition To State Tax Giveaways For Wealthy Corporations writes Lisa Savage
at Went 2 the Bridge. Government military
spending sometimes takes the form of
“tax
expenditures” — credits, deductions, and other such subsidies provided
through the tax code rather than as overt budget spending. This can put
principled war tax resisters in the strange position of opposing tax breaks
that might reduce government revenue when those tax breaks are disguised
military spending boosts. Specifically, Savage reviews the campaign to
stop the state of Maine from giving $60 million in tax breaks to General
Dynamics.

U.S.
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement created a “Victims of Immigration
Crime Engagement” office to help promote the bigoted fantasies of the Trump
administration, and launched a hotline people could use to report crimes by
immigrants. That hotline was
immediately swamped by prank calls.
“Prank calls fully upended the system, leaving operators unable to answer
more than 98 percent of incoming calls during the protest as the media
relations team attempted to contain the narrative.”

Once in a blue moon, a tax resister receives a summons from the
IRS,
demanding that the resister show up at an agency office and bring along a
bunch of documents that describe their finances and assets. Some resisters
acquiesce, not feeling they have anything to hide, and not wanting to make
this their battle. Others have successfully raised Fifth Amendment
objections to being forced to testify against themselves in this way. If
you’ve ever wondered what might happen if you just said “no” and left it at
that, consider the case of Ronald Conner.
Conner is one of those sovereign-citizen, “show me the law” types, and he
just flat-out refused to cooperate. A judge then ordered him to, he
continued to refuse, so the judge locked him up for contempt of court. He’s
been behind bars for a year and a half now, and shows no sign of giving
in.

With some fanfare, the
IRS
rolled out a “Taxpayer Bill of Rights” some years back. But because there
was no mechanism included for taxpayers to enforce these rights
against the agency, it was widely seen as decorative rather than
substantial. The 2018 Temple Law Review Symposium
took a closer look, and tried to discover ways that taxpayers might wield
the federal Taxpayer Bill of Rights (and its state-level cousins) against
tax agencies.

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